This is an “off” week for cars in the Mad Men series. Don Draper and his advertising-firm colleagues made no mention of the Chevrolet account or the new car they are tasked with promoting. But there was one decent automotive scene, and it got me thinking about the reality of the compact-car market in the late 1960s.

When Don stopped for gas at a rural filling station he stepped out of his Cadillac Coupe De Ville with an upper-crust confidence that seemed to confirm he and the huge, flashy ride belonged together. He runs into his ex-wife Betty at the station, and she’s driving a ’65 (or maybe a ’66) Ford Country Squire wagon. While not exactly fancy, Betty’s car is worthy of the Preppy Handbook.

Critics like to knock the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid for everything from stingy battery-powered range to its cramped cabin and high sticker price. But it has the most loving owners of any regular production car in the U.S., according to a new survey.

Consumer Reports, the magazine known for reviewing and grading a range of consumer products, but famous for its car reviews, said the Volt won its most-loved-car award for the second year in a row. In doing so it beat out a number of vehicles that tend to have obsessively enthusiastic owners, including the Toyota Prius, Nissan Leaf, Porsche 911 and Chevrolet Corvette.

The booming market for auto lending is causing deal makers to kick into high gear.

General Motors Co. GM 0.00%on Wednesday said that it would buy the international operations owned by Ally Financial Inc. as part of a push to build up an auto-loan business after abandoning it six years ago.

Spanish lender Banco Santander SA SAN.MC +1.09%is planning to take its U.S. consumer-finance unit public in a deal that could value it at $6 billion, people familiar with the effort said.

NEW DELHI–Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. — plagued by labor problems at its two factories in Haryana state — is set to soon start work on building a previously-announced plant in Gujarat.

“We expect them [Maruti] to start their preparation in three months,” said a senior Gujarat state government official who didn’t want to be named.

He declined to elaborate.

The plant will be Maruti’s third manufacturing facility in India and its first outside Haryana, where a July 18 riot by about 3,000 workers at its Manesar factory resulted in the death of a senior manager, injured more than 100 people and forced the company to suspend production.

A rainbow-colored piece of cloth flapping atop a Fort Wayne, Ind. truck factory is drawing attention to General Motors Co.

A GM plant there raised the flag on Sunday in honor of gay pride month. The plant’s manager rolled out the banner at the request of an employee group representing gay workers, the company said.

It’s GM’s latest gay-friendly display. Earlier this month it transformed the LED-display atop its Detroit headquarters into a rainbow in honor of the city’s annual gay pride celebration. GM also published a gay-themed ad for its Chevy Volt battery powered car, featuring the car “coming out” to its more traditional parents.

General Motors Co. said it will recall a total of 413,418 Chevrolet Cruze cars in the U.S. from the 2011 and 2012 model years to fix a problem that could lead to an accumulation of automotive fluids in the engine compartment.

The company said improper engine oil-change procedures on these vehicles can lead to oil spilling or dripping onto hot parts of the engine, exhaust-system or the engine shield. This could cause the shield to ignite and fire to spread in the engine area.

Indian auto manufacturing has been one of the few bright spots on the factory landscape in the past few years, with sales of cars and utility vehicles almost doubling from six years ago, and Chennai and other cities booming from the business.

But proposals that are part of India’s discussions on a free trade agreement with the European Union threaten to undermine those gains by giving European automakers an unfair advantage and hindering future investments in Indian manufacturing, according the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, a lobby group of global automakers in India.

In the next few months, Ford Motor Co. must confront a burgeoning supply of its small cars now piling up on dealer lots. How it handles the problem will give an indication of how much Detroit has really changed.

Ford, General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC used to resort to steep incentives and cut rate sales to rental companies to clear bloated inventories. Each rejected the practice amid the 2008 recession—and have stayed true to their pledge, thus far.

Black Eyed Peas singer Will.I.Am told Tonight Show host Jay Leno he is developing a new car company to bring jobs to the East Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up. He even showed the sporty model he plans to turn out.

He calls the angular, low-slung car Iamauto and said it was built with ”a whole bunch of parts” from Chrysler Group. Essentially, he said, he started with a Chrysler chassis and created the body shell. Because it is built on an existing platform, the car is certified as street-legal, he said, adding that the car reflects his technological leanings.

DETROIT—General Motors Co. sold 1,529 battery-powered Chevrolet Volt cars last month, a 34% increase from November, amid a U.S. investigation into whether the car’s battery poses a fire risk.

More than one-third of those sales were to corporate fleets; a larger proportion than in previous months when about 10% of Volts were bought by corporate and other fleet customers. GM said last month was the first time the company had enough supply to fill orders from corporate buyers, which pay the same price as retail buyers.